NASA funds design for a food replicator

[n2doc]

By Christopher Mims


Anjan Contractor’s 3D food printer might evoke visions of the “replicator” popularized in Star Trek, from which Captain Picard was constantly interrupting himself to order tea. And indeed Contractor’s company, Systems & Materials Research Corporation, just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of his universal food synthesizer.

But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3D printing, envisions a much more mundane—and ultimately more important—use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor’s vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store.

Ubiquitous food synthesizers would also create new ways of producing the basic calories on which we all rely. Since a powder is a powder, the inputs could be anything that contain the right organic molecules. We already know that eating meat is environmentally unsustainable, so why not get all our protein from insects?

If eating something spat out by the same kind of 3D printers that are currently being used to make everything from jet engine parts to fine art doesn’t sound too appetizing, that’s only because you can currently afford the good stuff, says Contractor. That might not be the case once the world’s population reaches its peak size, probably sometime near the end of this century.

more

http://qz.com/86685/the-audacious-plan-to-end-hunger-with-3-d-printed-food/

[LiberalEsto]

1. Oh yum.

I can hardly wait.

[DetlefK]

2. What will taste and texture be like? (Prepare for your food to become crappier.)

Those poor kids who think that the "orange-juice" at the store is what orange-juice is supposed to taste like.
Those poor teenagers who are okay with eating nothing but fast-food.
Those poor adults who regard microwave-food as decent in taste.

This is just the next step:
Pressed bits that look like plastic, chew like half-cooked noodles and taste like chemical E342? Yummy.
You get ever worse quality and you learn to accept it as the new normal.

Cooking and eating connect the human, his consciousness and his body, to the outside world, to nature and society.
We abandon those connections at our own peril.

[htuttle]

3. Tea, Earl Grey, hot.

[kentauros]

4. At first I thought this might be CHON food,

as from Frederick Pohl's Gateway saga. But, I guess we're still a ways off from even that technology as yet

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=532

[Posteritatis]

5. Mmmm, kneejerk luddite bait. (nt)

[DeSwiss]

6. K&R

[TupperHappy]

7. Captain, the uniform dispensor isn't working!

Then make it sew.

...

Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk.